We've passed through the minimum for the week, and the trends are starting to look more worrisome. Let's start with the Daily New Cases. Prior to the last week, the maximums and minimums had slowly but steadily been decreasing. As a result, the number of new cases decreased, on average from about 30,000 per day on April 23 to about 23,000 per day on May 14. I had noted that this past week's maximum was about the same as the prior week and was skeptical that the upcoming minimum would be low enough to compensate. Well, the results are in, and not only was the minimum not low enough, but it was higher than last week's minimum. The trend is now broken and the 7-day average is back on the uptick. Higher numbers are very likely to come in for the rest of the week if they follow the weekly cycle. This will drive the 7-day trend even higher. I suspect this is just the beginning of what's to come.
Turning to the Daily Death statistics, it looks like the 7-day trend is heading toward a more steady number and that the slow decrease is also approaching an end, but that signal is less robust than for the Daily New Cases. Since the number of deaths should be a function of the total number of cases, it makes sense that the death statistics should start to reflect the infection statistics. Unfortunately, the relationship between these two data isn't as tight as it should be, because the availability of testing has an impact on the number of cases that are reported.
4 comments:
Dr. Rafkin - did you catch this article?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html
It's a shame, really. We look like a three ring circus without a ring leader.
I sure did! Testing is a joke. It's not just combining numbers, but now some states are trying to cook the books to show lower infections. That's criminal.
I really don't understand what is going on. Trump's policies have an adverse effect on his base. From encouraging churches to open down to vote-in by mail. They will be a majority of the culling and hospitalizations come this fall.
From the preliminary Antibody testing it looks like we're going to have a hell of a fall: the virus returns - little to no immunity in the community; mental fatigue; an ugly election cycle; recession/depression; suffering and death. We have very little time to prepare for the double whammy of flu/covid.
Jobs are not going to return in the next 5 months but the virus will. We have to get that buffoon out.
I agree it is criminal. Falsifying data to make policy decisions. Making it look like you have testing capacity as well your (+) rate continues to fall. It doesn't matter that these are facts and skews data. It won't change anyone's mind. Everyone is rooted in their opinion.
Trump plays one-dimensional checkers and cares only about how he looks at the given moment in time. If you view everything that he does through this lens--living in the moment and making everything about him--then what he does becomes completely understandable. He's not worried about the future, because he's incapable of running even the simplest mental models into the future. What he's doing now with respect to churches and mail-in votes looks good NOW to his base NOW. It makes his rating numbers look good NOW.
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